1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to games, and more particularly, to a modified electronic video poker card game.
2. Description of the Related Art
The gaming industry, in particular, gambling casinos, has come to recognize that to sustain long term success it must be constantly innovative in introducing new games and new gambling concepts to the gaming public.
One game of interest over the years is poker. Table and video poker and other casino poker games are well known and enjoy substantial success. With reference to electronic video poker games, in a typical game a player makes a selected wager and initiates the play of the game. The processor of the video poker game is programmed to select from a suitable memory structure containing data representing 52 cards of a deck, data representative of a five card opening holding. These five cards are displayed face up for the player to see. The player can discard some or all of the cards whereupon the processor from the data structure replaces the discarded cards to define a final holding or hand. If the hand corresponds to a pre-determined schedule or table of poker holdings, e.g., a pair of Jacks or better, four-of a-kind, flush, the player is awarded a payoff.
Various attempts have been made to enhance play of poker over the years. There are video poker variations, such as deuces wild, where the deuces of the deck of cards are wild, Joker""s wild where an additional Joker is included in the deck which is wild as well as Joker/deuces wild games. Further variations have been made over the years. Examples of such attempts are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,882,260, Marks et al, which is incorporated herein by reference. Marks et al. provides a number of examples of U.S. patent references:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,743,022, Wood, second chance poker method; U.S. Pat. No. 4,948,134, Suttle et al., electronic five card poker game where cards are given to the players one at a time; U.S. Pat. No. 5,013,049, Tomaszewski, five card poker game where up to two cards are drawn; U.S. Pat. No. 5,118,109, Gumina, instant poker game card; U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,915, Miller, six card, two hand video poker game; U.S. Pat. No. 5,294,128, Marauez, six cards, three hand poker game; U.S. Pat. No. 5,382,025, Sklansky et al., three hands, two card poker game where each player chooses one hand and five communal cards are dealt face up; U.S. Pat. No. 5,407,199, Gumina, interactive video/casino poker game-drawpoker, hold""em poker; U.S. Pat. No. 5,415,404, Joshi et al., multiplay video poker game in which the player""s sub-hands are compensated to increase the payoff level of the winning hands; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,431,407, Hofberg et al., casino poker game.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,451 to Fulton involves a modified poker game where the player is dealt pairs of cards, where one card is optional and the other mandatory. The player is permitted to exchange at each round the optional card until five cards are selected. The resulting five card hand is then evaluated for payoff against a fairly standard payoff table.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,314,194 to Wolf deals the player seven cards. The player then forms two hands: a five card hand (e.g., a front hand), and a two card hand (e.g., a back hand). The rules for playing this game are quite elaborate, including requiring each player to arrange the hand so that the rank of the back hand is greater than the rank of the front hand.
Each of the prior art attempts at making poker interesting and challenging have been successful to varying degrees. Each provide a poker game that combines the attributes of skill, luck, excitement and simplicity with rapid play.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a poker game that combines the attributes of skill, luck, excitement and simplicity with rapid play that is both unique and innovative.
The method of the present invention involves a card game in which the player plays one or more sub-hands of cards. At the start of each round of play, the player makes an initial wager to determine the number of sub-hands to be played in that round. In one embodiment, the sub-hands are constructed column-by-column, whereby cards in a particular column of a sub-hand can only be selected from cards from an associated column from two exposed hands of cards dealt at the start of a round of play. In this embodiment, at the start of a round, two hands of five-cards are dealt face-up and are column aligned card-for-card with each other and with card positions for cards defining three sub-hands to be manually constructed by the player in that round. The player manually selects none or one of the two cards from a first column of the two exposed hands for duplication into a first column position of the first sub-hand. In the case where the player has elected to place a wager to play additional sub-hands, the selection process described above is repeated for a first card position of the second and possibly third sub-hands, depending on the wagered amount. For each wagered sub-hand, the above process is repeated for the second through fifth columns. Additional cards are then dealt to each sub-hand for any unfilled positions, intentionally left unfilled by the player during the sub-hand construction process, so that each sub-hand is a completed five-card hand.
The method also includes the steps of individually comparing each hand or betting line played by the player with corresponding values in a predetermined winning schedule, and awarding the player and/or declaring the player a winner, responsive to the total value.
In alternate versions of the embodiment described above, the play of the game is modified in alternate ways, described below as versions B through E. The various alternate versions describe modifications to the basic game including: (1) providing a player with an option to interchange cards in the first and second hands with cards remaining in the deck; (2) dealing a lesser number of cards to one of the two hands of cards dealt face-up at the start of a round of play; (3) as a further variation of (2), dealing the lesser number of cards to random positions of the hand having the lesser number of cards; (4) duplicating by the player the lesser number of cards into one of an associated or non-associated column of the one or more sub-hands; and (5) starting with only a single hand of at least five cards from which one or more sub-hands are to be constructed by the player.